The problem with Boredom

Does it help lead to political extremism or keep us grounded?

Boredom is something almost all of us are struck with once in a while. When we sit uncomfortably in our cosy chairs, or are slowly walking back from the shop we did not have to go to, we cast our minds towards what we could be doing. As if, we should be doing something, anything, to stave off this peculiar feeling. It does not make us unhappy, perhaps a little lost, and guilty for ‘wasting time’ in a world that tells us we should always be doing something, even when we are not.

Boredom is widely stigmatised as a form of wastefulness. We are lucky to have been given the gift of life, and here you are frittering the minutes away. Making us feel uncomfortable and even a little upset, boredom is a complicated emotion to wrestle with. On a personal level, boredom, when it appears regularly, tells me something has gone wrong. Why am I just so damn bored?

But perhaps there is nothing wrong with boredom. As the philosopher Megan Fritts argues, boredom is merely a part of life. It is not, as Betty Draper said in Mad Men, the product of boring people. There is nothing to be done- boredom is a natural state and something we cannot avoid, much like when our computer is on a little too long and starts to run that bit slower (perhaps my computer is bored right now, given it is always used for the same set of tasks….).

Boredom could even be seen as a reprieve from great struggle. Megan goes on to claim that the most common disruptor of boredom is tragedy itself. Now, depending upon how you define ‘tragedy’, we may want to question the accuracy of Megan’s statement. Is it an unsatisfying sexual experience with a beautiful person? A meal which turns our stomachs? An uncomfortable pint? If tragedy could be described as any of these things, then perhaps Megan is correct. Otherwise, I think she is reaching given the rarity we attach to the visceral term ‘tragedy’.

It strikes me that boredom is more often than not punctuated by small things that grab our attention. Perhaps, a particularly good book or a social call can elevate us away from boredom. Maybe our partners can distract us with all kinds of weird and wonderful things, enabling us to move away from the island on which we are stuck, like Tom Hanks in Castaway, when we are bored. Tragedy, it appears to me, is necessarily rare, but boredom is not. Therefore, tragedy will not be the common disruptor of boredom; it will necessarily be a rarer occurrence.

Boredom is oftentimes framed as an intensely personal and human experience—something which cannot be avoided and affects our day-to-day lives. As someone who lectures to university students, I can see how they struggle with boredom - sometimes, shockingly, even during my classes. Yet, boredom is not only a personal phenomenon affecting ourselves. It can play a much bigger role in the world.

We may question the role of boredom politically. Surprise, surprise - this politics blog is finally getting there! Francis Fukuyama, in "The End of History," believed that boredom was one of the possible entry points into political breakdown for Liberal Democracies. Whereas previous generations had to struggle for their success, in a world dominated by Liberal Democracies and increasing wealth, the struggle was over. Far from being recognised, the lack of struggle, for Fukuyama at least, creates a gap between recognition and realisation, creating dissatisfaction.

Such dissatisfaction is no small matter. Everyone wants to be recognised and is the ‘central character’ in their own story. Our protagonists require something to keep their egos in check. Our desire for something new and exciting in a world ruled by beige can lead society to dangerous places. If Liberal Democracy is to function, we need not merely economic success but something deeper —excitement and recognition.

We may see the failure to acknowledge this deep longing in the notion of abundance itself. Writers such as Aaron Bastani believe that technology can provide abundance as a way to alleviate our political problems. Gravitating ourselves out of conflict via the creation of more material is only a solution for those who lack imagination or thought beyond the most obvious. We only need to look at Succession or the notion of Affluenza to see what happens to us when our lives lack purpose beyond the accumulation of more wealth.

(Kendall Roy clearly loving life in Succession…..)

Those citing abundance as a panacea for our ills clearly must be unfamiliar with Huxley’s Brave New World, where abundance merely hides the failures from our eyes. Material well-being is not the solution to political conflict in the long run. As Gulf regimes have demonstrated, abundance may be able to mask political frailty, but it cannot rectify it. The lessons from regimes and culture are that abundance, when passed down, makes us dissatisfied not only with what we have, but also with the reality that we did not build it. It makes us question, even more deeply, what is the point. It leads us on a journey that eventually challenges the existing hierarchy that created it all in the first place.

Struggle may well be an important part of politics, or at least a functional aspect of politics for personal identity. Reading Robert Caro’s first volume of LBJ, where he vividly describes the harsh and unwavering conditions of the Hill Country in Texas. Life was not only difficult economically, with the land growing more arid every year, but culture and connection were difficult to attain due to the lack of telephones, regular newspapers, or accessible roads.

Life was especially difficult for Lyndon, who had grown up as part of a respected family which was later cast into poverty by his father’s reckless gambling in rebuilding his shattered family’s landed estate. As a young boy, when his father was a respected figure in the community, Johnson mirrored his father in every conceivable manner. However, when his father was scorned and brazenly mocked for being unable to pay his bills regularly, Lyndon withdrew and began a bitter contest of wills that does not appear to have ended.

The struggle for Johnson instilled in him a work ethic that belied any boredom he may have personally experienced. Instead, he became an incessant workaholic and was determined to ‘become someone’. Not unlike Nixon, who also grew up in general poverty and forever felt that he was not good enough, Johnson appeared to possess a similar story. Both men seemed determined to achieve as much as they could whilst they could, regardless of the cost to their reputations.

We may think, therefore, that the acceptance of a bit of boredom in Johnson’s and Nixon’s lives may have been a good thing. Acknowledging boredom could have helped avoid Watergate, Vietnam, and the emergence of the toxic national distrust that engulfs the executive branch of government. Maybe this is too much alternative history for one article; those decisions were not merely the product of one man but a much longer and more drawn-out process, which represents the hubris of hegemony and the danger of the Imperial Presidency. But regardless of their faults, the desire to rebel against boredom in both Johnson and Nixon’s cases led to two very impressive and serious men entering the highest offices of the land. Do we witness such seriousness today in the executive office?

What is Trump if not the candidate replacing the boredom of what has come before? The Democrats, far from establishing candidacies that excite the American people, have chosen three establishment politicians in the form of Clinton, Biden, and Harris. None of these three looked like they could crack a joke, or offer anything radically different from something that hasn’t already been promised before. Trump versus all three of these candidates was a fight between continuity and change. When citizens are bored and feeling antsy, they will surely, like we do in our personal lives, vote for change.

Liberal Democracy may offer us stability, abundance, and an attempt to recognise more people in the body politic than any other system can, and for all its faults, it has, for over a century, delivered on its promises. Yet, just as inheriting great wealth may not be good for our souls, inheriting an increasingly rich and stable body politic may not be suitable for us either. It may encourage lethargy, an appetite for change, and radicalism. It may inherently create the space for people like Trump to emerge out of the cracks to do something, anything, differently.

Boredom may be cyclical and inevitable in our personal and political lives. In essence, it may be a reality we have to accept and ride as well as we can. But we would be fools to ignore it or simply accept it. Instead, we must recognise and overcome it. We must demand more of ourselves and others to limit our decisions when boredom kicks in and threatens all that we have built, and more importantly, others have built. Boredom is not inherently bad but our responses to boredom can be toxic and dangerous!